Books like “The Graveyard Book”

What to read after “The Graveyard Book” by Neil Gaiman: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Rivers of London
Ben Aaronovitch · 2011
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
Peter Grant, a London police officer, discovers that magic is real when he interviews a ghost about a headless corpse. He is assigned to a small, secret unit of the Metropolitan Police that deals with supernatural crime, and takes on a case that stirs up the city's old spirits.
2
Cemetery Boys
Aiden Thomas · 2020
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
Yadriel, a trans boy, wants his traditional family to accept him as a brujo. When his initiation goes wrong he raises the ghost of a murdered classmate, and together they search for answers while Yadriel hides the truth from everyone he loves.
3
Slade House
David Mitchell · 2015
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
Behind a hidden door in a narrow London alley waits a house that appears only every nine years. Guests are drawn inside and never come out the same. Linked over decades, their stories reveal what feeds the house. A haunting dark-fantasy tale about appetite and illusion.
4
Unbreakable
Kami Garcia · 2013
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
- Secret Society
After her mother's death, Kennedy Waters is pulled into a world of ghosts and demons when she learns her family belonged to the Legion, a secret society sworn to fight them. With three brothers as her allies, she must help close a threat that killed her mother and is still hunting her.
5
Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo · 2019
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
- Secret Society
Galaxy Stern, the lone survivor of a brutal murder, is offered a place at Yale by the secret societies that run the university's magic. Her task is to watch their rituals, but when a local girl dies, Alex must use the very power she fears to find the killer.
6
The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater · 2012
Similar plot moves: “Prophecy” and “Found Family”
Blue has grown up in a house of psychics and is warned she will cause her true love's death. Drawn into the search for a lost Welsh king with a group of boys from a prestigious school, she finds her life tangled with theirs and with their dangerous families.
7
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters · 2009
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
In post-war England, a country doctor is drawn into the fading life of a once-grand family living in a decaying mansion. Strange events unsettle the house and its residents, and suspicion falls in every direction. An unnerving story about class, decline and things that may not be ghosts.
8
The Dark Is Rising
Susan Cooper · 1973
Same genre: “Children's fantasy”
- Prophecy
- Coming of Age
On his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton learns that he is the last of the Old Ones, born to hold back the Dark. As midwinter closes over the Thames valley, he must gather the six Signs of Light before the Rider and his powers can rise. A tale of the Light's long war against the Dark.
9
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
M. R. James · 1904
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
Eight ghost stories in which scholars and clergymen uncover things better left alone. An old manuscript, a whistled tune and a locked country house each hold a presence that follows the people who found it back into ordinary life.
10
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill · 2007
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
Aging rock star Judas Coyne collects macabre curiosities. When he buys a haunted suit online, the dead man tied to it begins to stalk him and the women in his life. To survive, Jude must confront the violence in his own past. A supernatural horror about guilt and revenge.
11
The Crystal Cave
Mary Stewart · 1970
Similar plot moves: “Wise Mentor” and “Prophecy”
Merlin, the illegitimate son of a Welsh princess, grows up despised and unsure of his parentage. Drawn toward a hidden power, he travels through a Britain of warring kings and finds his place as the prophet and adviser of a young Arthur.
12
Ghost Story
Peter Straub · 1979
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
Four elderly friends in a small New York town have spent a lifetime telling each other ghost stories at their club. Now something from a winter forty years earlier, a death they all helped to hide, has returned to collect the debt.